JACK OF ALL TRADES (2000-2001)
STARRING Bruce Campbell
PREMISE The Evil Dead veteran plays an American agent during the 1800s who's sent to the South Pacific to help a British spy (Angela Dotchin) guard against Napoleon's naval advances.
REDEEMING QUALITIES As always, Bruce's chin. And the brilliance of casting Verne Troyer as Bonaparte.
HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS (1995-1999)
STARRING Kevin Sorbo
PREMISE Imagine Knight Rider, but without the car. Hercules (Sorbo) and his buddy Iolaus (Michael Hurst) regularly roll into some ancient Grecian hamlet to save the townsfolk from rogue warlords, petty gods, or demons from the mythological pit.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Sorbo was an engaging lead, and the series always had a good sense of humor about itself.
XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995-2001)
STARRING Lucy Lawless
PREMISE Imagine Knight Rider, but without the car. Xena (Lawless) and her buddy Gabrielle (Renée O'Connor) regularly roll into some ancient Grecian hamlet to save the townsfolk from rogue warlords, petty gods, or demons from the mythological pit. Oh, and Xena is seeking to make amends for her early days as a rogue warlord herself.
REDEEMING QUALITIES A darker tone than Hercules set it apart, and the recurring lesbian subtext made it pretty mature for a show about hot chicks kicking ass.
EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT (1997-2002)
STARRING Kevin Kilner
PREMISE Aliens have made first contact and ingratiated themselves with humanity. A police officer (Kilner) is caught between protecting them and fighting them as a member of the resistance.
REDEEMING QUALITIES It's based on a Gene Roddenberry idea — does that count?
THUNDER IN PARADISE (1994)
STARRING Hulk Hogan, Carol Alt
PREMISE Is it cheating if I say that this is like Knight Rider, but with a super-advanced boat instead of a car? Because it totally is. Two former Navy SEALs (Hogan and Chris Lemmon) flit all over the high seas as crime-fighting mercenaries while making time to raise Hogan's daughter and flirt with a hottie bar owner (Alt).
REDEEMING QUALITIES The boat. It talks.
CLEOPATRA 2525 (2000-2001)
STARRING Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt, Jennifer Sky
PREMISE Five hundred years in the future, three very attractive revolutionaries (Torres, Pratt, Sky) do battle with the machines that have taken control of Earth's surface.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Always nice to see an entirely female-driven show, even if one of the characters was a 20th-century exotic dancer who fell into suspended animation after getting a boob job. (Seriously.)
STARRING Catherine Oxenberg(1998-1999)
PREMISE A counterterrorist team sanctioned by the United Nations, H.E.A.T. (Hemisphere Emergency Action Team; awesome acronym, I know) was founded by the terrifically named Ashley Hunter-Coddington (Oxenberg) and fights international terrorism anywhere a bunch of bikini-clad models wouldn't be suspect.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Did I mention that H.E.A.T.'s cover was as the owner-models of a bathing-suit company?
QUEEN OF SWORDS (2000-2001)
STARRING Tessie Santiago
PREMISE Didja ever see Zorro? Young, attractive Spanish aristocrat sets up shop in Old California to fight injustice — personified by a power-abusing governor? Yeah, now imagine that with a woman in the lead.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Gosh, the show sure looked pretty, with all its Spanish location shooting and hot swordswoman action
RELIC HUNTER (1999-2002)
STARRING Tia Carrere
PREMISE Continuing the cheesy-TV trend of making shows a lot like movies you may have liked, but just a little different, Hunter followed Indiana Jones-y archaeologist Sydney Fox (Carrere) as she spans the globe looking for historic artifacts that needed returning to museums.
REDEEMING QUALITIES There was one episode where Sydney and her assistant, Nigel (Christien Anholt), had to go undercover at a nudist colony...
BEASTMASTER (1999-2002)
STARRING Daniel Goddard
PREMISE If you loved the 1982 Marc Singer flick of the same name, then we should have a beer, because there aren't many of us. But you'll also know the gist of the TV extension: Dar (Goddard) is the last of his tribe, can talk to animals, and dislikes wearing a shirt.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Natalie Mendoza, who kicked so much ass in The Descent, plays Dar's lost love.
SUPER FORCE (1990-1992)
STARRING Ken Olandt
PREMISE Ex-astronaut Zachary Stone (Olandt) dons an experimental suit of futuristic armor to fight, well, futuristic crime — and bring the criminals who murdered his brother to justice.
REDEEMING QUALITIES One of the show's recurring villains was G. Gordon Liddy. Yes, the Watergate G. Gordon Liddy.
RENEGADE (1992-1997)
STARRING Lorenzo Lamas
PREMISE Well, the opening narration sets it all up better than I could: ''He was a cop and good at his job. But he committed the ultimate sin, and testified against other cops gone bad. Cops that tried to kill him but got the woman he loved instead. Framed for murder, now he prowls the badlands. An outlaw hunting outlaws, a bounty hunter, a renegade.''
REDEEMING QUALITIES Lorenzo's crime-fighting duster was pretty rad.
T. AND T. (1988-1990)
STARRING Mr. T
PREMISE The Mighty Mohawked One played former boxer T.S. Turner, who was — what else? — convicted of a crime he didn't commit. After he's sprung by crusading lawyer Amanda Taler (Alexandra Amini), the two Ts start a private-investigation business.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Duh, Mr. T! I pity the fool who needs more.
CONAN: THE ADVENTURER (1997-1998)
STARRING Ralf Moeller
PREMISE The despicable sorcerer Hissah Zuhl has killed Conan's parents and enslaved his homeland of Cimmeria — so what else is there for a barbarian to do but exact his revenge?
REDEEMING QUALITIES Muscles, baby.
BAYWATCH (1989-2001)
STARRING David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson
PREMISE Oh, please. Like anyone cared.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Red bathing suits. And slow motion.
STARRING David Hasselhoff
PREMISE Apparently, Mitch Buchannon (Hasselhoff) got tired of the sand and the sun and opened a PI firm with a buddy. But that got boring to watch, so in the second season, the show went all X-Files. And was promptly canceled.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Given that there were a lot less bathing suits, not many.
THE ADVENTURES OF SINBAD (1996-1998)
STARRING Zen Gesner
PREMISE It's like Hercules and Xena, but in the Middle East! Or like Knight Rider, but with a sailboat!
REDEEMING QUALITIES Nice to see Baghdad portrayed in something of a positive light.
V.I.P. (1998-2002)
STARRING Pamela Anderson
PREMISE Anderson played Vallery Irons, the glamorous figurehead of a bodyguard agency. Together with six other beautiful people, Val solves crimes by using her bubbly, buoyant personality.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Anderson's willingness to poke fun at her own image leavened the already light adventure.
ANDROMEDA (2000-2005)
STARRING Kevin Sorbo
PREMISE Again, why summarize when I can crib from the show itself? ''He is the last guardian of a fallen civilization, a hero from another time. Faced with a universe in chaos, Dylan Hunt recruits an unlikely crew and sets out to reunite the galaxies. On the starship Andromeda, hope lives again.''
REDEEMING QUALITIES The Sorbo!
SHEENA (2000-2002)
STARRING Gena Lee Nolin
PREMISE Nolin left the confining world of Baywatch to topline this comic-book adaptation. Like Tarzan, Sheena was orphaned in the jungle and grew up learning to fight like animals and talk to animals. Unlike Tarzan, she can take on the form of animals — just by looking into their eyes.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Hmmm. I've gotta go with the jungle-print bikini.
ADVENTURE INC. (2002-2003)
STARRING Michael Biehn
PREMISE Judson Cross (Biehn) calls himself a professional explorer, and he and his company take it upon themselves to find stuff that needs finding. And, more often than not, get into trouble along the way.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Michael Biehn. The dude was Kyle Reese, man!
THE LOST WORLD (1999-2002)
STARRING Peter McCauley
PREMISE No, it didn't have anything to do with Jurassic Park, though Prof. George Challenger (McCauley) and his turn-of-the-century explorers do run into dinosaurs during their voyage to a prehistoric land hidden in the Amazon.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Dinosaurs!
MUTANT X (2001-2004)
STARRING John Shea
PREMISE Adam Kane (Shea) was a geneticist who accidentally created hundreds of mutants, who are being hunted by Kane's old employers, who want mutants for themselves.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Even though it looked shot on the cheap, the stories hold up pretty well.
SHE SPIES (2002-2004)
STARRING Natasha Henstridge
PREMISE It's like a hotter version of The Mod Squad — three female felons are released from the hoosegow to work as secret agents for the government. Which, if you talk to any parole officer, happens all the time.
REDEEMING QUALITIES Henstridge sure is purty. Which, in a show like this, is all you're looking for.
KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (1993-1997)
STARRING David Carradine, Chris Potter
PREMISE Picking up a couple of generations after the first Kung Fu series, Carradine plays the grandson of the first Kwai Chang Caine, who, after the destruction of his Shaolin temple, reunites with his estranged son, a police detective named Peter (Chris Potter). Together, they get in adventures.
REDEEMING QUALITIES He may have lost a step since the '70s, but Carradine can still hold the screen — as we'd see later in Kill Bill.
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